Pinstorm only ad agency to make it to Red Herring Global Top 100 list

The agency has got the award for the application of technology to administer the social media marketing campaigns of advertisers

Mumbai based interactive firm Pinstorm has become the only advertising agency in the world to win the Red Herring Global Top 100 Award for the year 2009.

For the uninitiated, Red Herring is the US based technology magazine which lists the Top 200 companies or start-ups, of which it awards 100 firms each in Asia, North America and Europe every year. The 'Global Top 100' companies are selected from the above mentioned pool of regional companies. Technology firms are awarded on the basis of the innovative use of technology, for which they are required to submit case studies. Other parameters utilised to select the companies are financial performance and quality of management.

In a conversation with afaqs!, Mahesh Murthy, founder and chief-executive officer, Pinstorm, says that the agency has got the award as it had implemented the technology to run and administer the social media marketing campaigns of advertisers.

The agency had applied its tools or technology such as 'Tweet Reach', 'BuzzMeter' and 'Social Console' to manage the social media marketing campaigns of about 20 brands related to financial services, automobile and FMCG categories in 2009.

Explaining the utility of the mentioned tools, Mahesh Murthy, founder and chief-executive officer, Pinstorm, says that 'Tweet Reach' helps advertisers to track conversations on Twitter, figure out how many Twitter members have forwarded or re-tweeted and clicked on the message floated on Twitter, a micro-blogging platform. Apart from this, the tool also establishes the location, operating system, computer or laptop details of the user. It also figures out the total number of members who have clicked on a web link posted on Twitter. Murthy claims that about 10 advertisers had opted for the 'Tweet Reach' tool in the previous year.

'BuzzMeter' and 'Social Console' tools help advertisers to track conversations and respond to conversations happening about the brand on the Internet.

This is not the first time that Pinstorm has won a Red Herring award. Murthy says, "We had won the Asia award for use of technology or tools in the search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) fields in 2006 and 2007; and for the display advertising space in 2008." However, this is the first time that the agency has made it to the Red Herring Global Top 100 list.

Internet firms from India such as Consim Info, the owner of matrimonial portal Bhartamatrimony.com and ClickIndia.com, a classified ad posting website, have also won the Red Herring Global Top 100 Award for the year 2009.